Cankles, sausage toes AND a toddler?! Thanks Santa!

PSA – visiting the in-laws for 10 days over Christmas is bad for your health, especially when with child.  The stress of the visit made me swell up so bad that by the end of every day there it looked like there were doughnuts around my ankles and I could no longer distinguish my knee caps from my thighs. My feet were bulging over the sides of my ballet flats.  I can say this was directly related to the visit because no more than 48 hours after being home I was able to comfortably slide back into my pointed toe heels and “skinny” maternity jeans.

It’s possible that this was a more stressful than usual visit.  On top of all the additional attention, stranger belly rubs (and yes, you ARE a stranger even if I am married to your cousin’s best friend’s brother), unsolicited labor horror stories, and screams of disbelief and discouragement at my desire to MAYBE have a med-free childbirth,  we also had to deal with losing my husband’s grandfather to lung cancer three days before Christmas, with a wake and funeral trailing the holiday.  Let me tell you, it’s hard enough to make it through the holidays sans drinking heavily without having a Catholic funeral and wake thrown at you.  And the baby either loved or hated all the family chaos because he has never been so active.  Every time we were in a room full of family, which was pretty much all day every day, he was rolling and kicking like crazy.  I told him he needs to get used to it now because his father’s family will NOT be any quieter once he’s outside of the womb.

In addition to the lovely cankles and sausage toes Santa gave me, we also ended up coming home with a three year old.  Nope.  Not a three year old dog or cat or something else I could throw in a cage when we want to go out to a nice dinner.  An actual three year old little girl.  Our niece.  Due to some personal things she needs to work out, her mother, my husband’s sister, signed over power of attorney to us for the next six months.  I struggled with whether or not I wanted to write about this here, but since she’s going to be a very big part of us having the baby and bringing him home I didn’t want to confuse you all with her random appearances in my future tales.  She’s an absolute sweetheart, even if a tad over-dramatic at times (not at all like me!), and we feel so good about our decision to help her and her mother out.  Yes, it will be stressful and an adjustment and nothing like we’ve ever done before, but it was the right thing to do, and she deserves it.

So here we are…thrown into the world of parenting, months before we ever expected it.  We got to skip the bottles and dirty diapers for now, but are up to our eyeballs in sippy cups, stick on earrings, Teddy Grahms, hot dogs, and Disney Princess Barbies (and can I tell you I – a self proclaimed priss – have always HATED Barbies….damn shoes and dresses never stay on…stupid hair always gets tangles…too many farking accessories… makes me glad I’m having a boy).  I feel like I have aged ten years in the last three days.  Yes, you read the time stamp right.  I am blogging at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and I’m so tired.  It took all the energy I had to get up and turn on the TV to watch the ball drop because I have no idea where the remote is.  I’m ready for bed.

Happy New Year to you all!  I have a feeling it’s just about to get interesting…

23 weeks

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